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As mentioned in the previous post, normal insane profanity sprinkled ranting will now recommence.

The new LibCon coalition have spoken recently of ‘stink bombs’ and ‘mine fields’.

I wonder if the single biggest one might be the huge constituent of ‘wont work’ benefit claimants. Having been in the dole queue myself more than once, I am well aware that there are many people in receipt of state benefits who are desperate to get back to work.

On the other hand, because of both that experience and having lived in some rather desperately unromantic shite holes over the years, I am also well acquainted with the portion of benefit recipients who have no intention of ever getting a job, thank you very much. And that’s even assuming that anyone would hire them in the first place.

Which leaves a big tasty shit sandwich that we’re going to have to eat later. I don’t know what other parts of the UK are like, and at present, I am lucky enough to live in a rather pleasant part of my town, but round about these parts there are hordes of illiterate, unemployable, unskilled benefit claimants who – literally – wouldn’t work if you paid them. Estates full of them and their pastie dusted offspring.

So what are we going to do with them ? Well, it seems that we’re going to cut off their money if they don’t try and get a job. At which point, of course, since they are already living a life of casual criminality sprinkled with ankle tags and ASBOs aplenty, the fuckers are going to come round to your house and rob your stuff.

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Well, what with all the new politics about the place – and as I write this, the first sitting of the new house is ruining my staged withdrawal from 24 hour rolling news and Twitter – something new for this blog. Some news.

Well I say news, it’s more prurient gossip and ill informed opinion, but if you’ve been following the press recently, it’s entirely possible that you can no longer tell the difference.

There has been much talk of “scorched earth” and “stink bombs” as the new coalition move their troops into Whitehall and get their sticky hands on the well worn levers of power. Behind the scenes the fuses are fizzing on goodness knows how many more.

BCU’s source in the FE sector points one of these up. The sector has suffered something of a double blow recently, funding is being cut sharply in many places as a result of Labour’s spending cuts. Some FE colleges were also stung by the massively over budget LSC capital binge which left colleges – with contracts signed for expensive new build and no further access to government funding – reaching for private loans to cover the shortfall and to make up any budget overruns.

Across the North East, colleges are cutting back hard, and many are heading for rounds of redundancies. So many redundancies, in fact, that at a recent regional meeting of one FE union concern was expressed that there would not be enough union reps to go around.

There is no doubt that the funding issues already mentioned are – as the saying goes – the fault of the previous administration, and indeed colleges and universities unions were striking and campaigning about this even before the election.

According to BCU’s source, at one meeting between management and unions at a North East college last week, the union reps – who had been vocal in their support for the outgoing Labour government throughout the election campaign – had to have it forcibly put to them on more than occasion that the troubles they currently face would have remained the same even had Labour remained in power.

The unions, naturally, are already keen to bang the ‘Tory cuts’ drum. And according to BCU’s source it has already begun. Despite the fact that the cuts in question are very much Labour cuts. As the fuses fizz away on all those stink bombs yet to be discovered it seems that the unions stand ready to lay the sins of the old administration very firmly at the feet of the new one.

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Let it never be said that I won’t admit it when I’m wrong. Well, sometimes anyway. Yesterday I opined that the LibDems approach to Labour was nothing more than par for the course negotiation, finding out if Labour had some counter offer that would make a LibLab deal the better one. I mean, if you were shopping for car insurance, you’d want more than one quote, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to do the same when shopping for a future for the country. Personally I couldn’t imagine Labour being able to offer much, especially in terms of stability.

I will still maintain that this should have been the case, and maybe it still is, but then again, if it was the case, would the Conservatives have thrown in the desperate sounding last ditch offer of a referendum on AV ? And would they now be spinning like tops against a LibLab pact – though still not as badly as Labour, who are actually managing to spin both sides of the argument at the same time ? Surely if this was a move in the spirit I thought it was, it wouldn’t have been a surprise and the Conservatives would be maintaining their dignity – outwith the usual wingnuts whispering smears against Cameron into the ears of Mail hacks, obviously – until all the chips were down.

Who knows. Certainly not me. And until I do I think I will succumb to the prevailing meme, because the serious chance of a ‘progressive coalition’, frankly, appals me. Not least because I can’t get any fucker to explain to me what ‘progressive’ means.

It’s wrong, we should be grown up and just wait for negotiations to pan out, but hey, this way is more exciting.

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So Gordon Brown is to step down if the Lib/Con talks break down and allow a new leader to form a Lib/Lab coalition.

It has also been announced that the LIberal Democrats will hold formal talks with the Labour party.

And you’d think, from watching the hysterical newsies on BBC and SKY, and even more so from watching the hysterical party activists on twitter that the sky had fallen.

Tory activists on twitter, and retards on the news, ably aided by spinning Labour types who have suddenly emerged from the gaping silence to fill the airwaves with fear, uncertainty and doubt, think Clegg has betrayed the Conservatives and is now going off with Brown (or rather his successor) in order to form a coalition of losers.

At the same time, Labour sprogs, while wiping the – absurdly – apparently genuine tears from their eyes at the demise of their Great Leader are trumpeting that this means the formation of the much vaunted ‘rainbow coalition’.

All of this, is, of course bollocks.

The biggest clue to this is that all of a sudden, arch cunts like Alistair Campbell are suddenly on TV.

What is happening now is very simple. The Liberal Democrats have negotiated an offer with the Conservatives. They hold the balance of power. Now, Clegg has to go to Brown and tell him what that offer is, and say to him “So Gordon, this is what Dave has offered me, what about you ?”

That is all. So Keep Calm, and Cary On. Nothing untoward is afoot, whatever the sleep deprived, excitable, newsies and the labour bullshit wranglers are trying to tell you.

Since the possibility of PR started to be mooted, there has been a storm of hysterical tweets – often with multiple exclamation marks tagged on to them – warning against the sheer horror of PR on the grounds that it would somehow promote ‘fascism’. I’ll paraphrase them here

OMG in a proper Democracy people I disagree with would be allowed political representation! I protest! UKIP and the BNP would rule us !!! THE RACISTS!!!

Something of a surprise to see UKIP lumped in with the BNP there, presumably this is because the BNP numbers by themselves aren’t sufficiently frightening,

It’s about time, frankly, that these virulent ‘no platform’ fuckwits started to be honest and admitted that they hate democracy, they don’t support freedom of speech, and started to call for what they really want which is a totalitarian regime that brutally suppresses dissent and denies representation to anyone with the wrong kind of opinions.

A bit like, say, Stalin had.

Because by continuing to insist that people they disagree with deserve neither political representation or the right to an opinion, this is precisely what they are wishing for.

So come on antifas, lets have you, lets see you produce a manifesto that calls for the introduction of a dictatorship and the building of gulags or re-education camps.

And don’t let me hear you, ever, say anything about democracy other than that you hate it and think it should be abolished. Anything short of this is not simply hypocrisy, but a massive fucking lie.

UPDATE
The headline “OH MY GOD RACISTS IN CHARGE BY TEATIME” number was that the BNP would have got 12 seats. And looking at the percentage of the vote (1.9%) that is of course true – IF we can extrapolate from FPTP votes to a PR system, which is quite unlikely. While it’s easy to get hysterical about this if you can’t add up, the thing to remember is that those 12 seats, assuming that result came to pass, would mean that the BNP would, by the same maths, have slightly less than 1.9% of the power.

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Finding it incredible this afternoon that even as Conservative and Lib Dem MPs (or at least leadership teams) are actually acting like adults and talking about deals and compromise and common ground and all sorts of grown up stuff like that, every time the grass-roots activists and voters appear on TV they act more and more like vicious, petulant, squabbling children.

Cameron, of course, doesn’t need to worry to much about his grass-roots, because their affiliation is broadly tribal and his party structure doesn’t require him to ask, or even care, about their opinions. They’ll still vote Conservative, because they simply can’t imagine doing otherwise.

Clegg doesn’t have quite the same kind of tribal affiliation, but his core support is united behind a banner of “Tories are evil fox rapists”, and in his case, the democratic structure of his party means he does have to ask them. And a goodly number of them are going to be simply appalled that he is even talking to Cameron.

Amusingly, this could lead to the delicious situation whereby Clegg manages to ram PR past the Tories and then experiences epic electoral fail in an election run under it because the beardie weirides will never forgive him for dealing the right. Because thatcher, or progressive, or something.